Saving Animals from Extinction

hey, all. i've recently decided to look into reversing some of OTL's Holocene extinctions for my ASB ATL, to give it a more exotic flavor that you don't really see in most ATLs as far as i'm aware (or even in period pieces where such animals should appear). i've already more or less decided on the survival of the passenger pigeon and Carolina parakeet due to the cotton gin being introduced later, rendering them as critically endangered or extinct in the wild at worst, and the heath hen surviving mainly at Martha's Vineyard (where the last wild populations of them lived IOTL) before being proliferated in zoos by simply butterflying the rather long series of shitty luck that the species had at Martha's Vineyard IOTL. i just wanted to get some extra opinions on these ones as well as some initial input on some other species. i have little time before i have to leave for campus, so i haven't been able to put most of these species to scrutiny for survival ITL and i;m not 100% sure on most of the names (i copied them out of a couple of books that i have):
any help on this?

Most ornithologists believe that the "painted vulture" was a misidentified King Vulture specimen(or invented entirely). The King Vulture is extant.

Isn't there some evidence that the Thylacine may still exist?

I'd like to point out that some of those aren't even separate species. Tigers are all one species, no matter where they are and Quagga are just a variety of zebra (which themselves are Equis Quagga, from the sound they make... kwa ha ha ha). You also forgot the Scimitar Horn Oryx, which are extinct in the wild (but still hanging on in Texas last time I checked, despite environmental group's best efforts to have them removed from that State).


Any rate, in the AHN universe, Auk are still around (technically still endangered). Same with the Cook Sea Cow (no Steller or Bering exploration of the area), but those are critically so. Passenger pigeon aren't even endangered in that history. Unfortunately, the giant panda didn't fare so well.

I think the 'evidence' for surviving Thylacines is nothing more than a few vague eye witness accounts and an iffy picture or two, no more compelling than the 'evidence' people use when talking about Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.

The big, slow animals are too easy a food source and too slow as breeders to survive easy if there's a considerable human presence in the area. Isolated species like the dodo, who evolved without predators, don't stand a snowball's chance in hell once hungry humans and their invasive dogs, cats, and pigs arrive.

Better land management (which caused the extinction of animals like the Palestinian Painted Frog) and less over-hunting could allow smaller species like the passenger pigeon to survive and have some sort of a recovery.

If more effort is put into conservation sooner, species like the Thylacine and Quagga can hang on just long enough for breeding programs to get their numbers back up. All modern European bison and Przewalksi's horses descend from small (less than 20) captive populations that were bred back up once the species went extinct in the wild. Both European bison and the horses have been released back into the wild and have populations numbering in the hundreds. If Quagga/Thylacines/whatever go extinct in the wild, but there's still enough left in captivity to rebuild their numbers, the same can happen to them.

UncleDynamite said:

Most ornithologists believe that the "painted vulture" was a misidentified King Vulture specimen(or invented entirely). The King Vulture is extant.

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Zheng He said:

Isn't there some evidence that the Thylacine may still exist?

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The Kiat said:

I'd like to point out that some of those aren't even separate species. Tigers are all one species, no matter where they are and Quagga are just a variety of zebra (which themselves are Equis Quagga, from the sound they make... kwa ha ha ha). You also forgot the Scimitar Horn Oryx, which are extinct in the wild (but still hanging on in Texas last time I checked, despite environmental group's best efforts to have them removed from that State).

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like i said, i didn't have enough time before i left for campus to put anything on my list except for the bluebuck, elephant bird, laughing owl, and quagga to scrutiny, and of those i only definitively decided on the bluebuck (still extinct ITTL), and that i just copied them out of a couple of book i have. books that i got more than a decade ago at this point generally speaking, i'll be looking at other Holocene extinctions from online sources once i'm satisfied with whittling down the list i have right now

AHN is an acronym, right? which TL is that? i'd like to look into it for ideas as to how those species could potentially survive ITTL.

EDIT: i amended the list a little bit after putting the rest of it under some examination. in addition to removing some of those, i've decided to look further into a few more species (all from the list, some under different names here): Dawson's caribou, paradise parrot, Caribbean monk seal, and ivory-billed woodpecker

The ivory-billed woodpecker could be saved with less logging in the southeast. Perhaps a large national park established by Theodore Roosevelt or a private reserve created by some environmentally-minded gilded age robber baron could save the species even when it's at the brink.

oshron said:

AHN is an acronym, right? which TL is that? i'd like to look into it for ideas as to how those species could potentially survive ITTL.

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Timeline? Timeline! It's a book. One that I audit every year and am looking for ways to expand it. Fortunately, it's an e-book so I don't have to reprint it (does kindle automatically update books or does the buyer have to redownload the revised edition?). Anyrate, the Auk and Sea Cow were part of the 1st Edition that's floating around this here website (doesn't look much like the published Alternate History of the Netherlands).

The Kiat said:

Timeline? Timeline! It's a book. One that I audit every year and am looking for ways to expand it. Fortunately, it's an e-book so I don't have to reprint it (does kindle automatically update books or does the buyer have to redownload the revised edition?). Anyrate, the Auk and Sea Cow were part of the 1st Edition that's floating around this here website (doesn't look much like the published Alternate History of the Netherlands).

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well, how was i supposed to know that? i'll try looking into that, then, and thank you

Has anybody thought about saving Pleistocene Megafauna for domestication?


I've been reading 'Lands of Red and Gold' (it's kind of the reason I joined this forum) and I was kind of disappointed that NONE of the Australian megafauna made it into the present.


Other than that though it's fantastic...

Andrew the King said:

Has anybody thought about saving Pleistocene Megafauna for domestication? I've been reading 'Lands of Red and Gold' (it's kind of the reason I joined this forum) and I was kind of disappointed that NONE of the Australian megafauna made it into the present. Other than that though it's fantastic...

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while that's something that i'd be REALLY interested in writing, it's not what i'd focus on for TTL but since this is about preventing any extinction in general, i'd be up for discussion on that

Perhaps we should move the discussion elsewhere.

Romana said:

I think the 'evidence' for surviving Thylacines is nothing more than a few vague eye witness accounts and an iffy picture or two, no more compelling than the 'evidence' people use when talking about Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.

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True, but this does not discard the fact of an eventual survival. Other marsupial species have been gone for decades (Gilbert potoroo between 1840 and the 1990s) and later rediscovered. Thylacines were highly elusive and if a small population still survives, it will be very hard to find.

Romana said:

Better land management (which caused the extinction of animals like the Palestinian Painted Frog) and less over-hunting could allow smaller species like the passenger pigeon to survive and have some sort of a recovery.

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You're so misinformed. Palestinian Painted Frog was rediscovered in 2011.

Romana said:

If more effort is put into conservation sooner, species like the Thylacine and Quagga can hang on just long enough for breeding programs to get their numbers back up. All modern European bison and Przewalksi's horses descend from small (less than 20) captive populations that were bred back up once the species went extinct in the wild. Both European bison and the horses have been released back into the wild and have populations numbering in the hundreds. If Quagga/Thylacines/whatever go extinct in the wild, but there's still enough left in captivity to rebuild their numbers, the same can happen to them.

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Quagga is not a species, even it's doubtful that it was even a subspecies of the Plains zebra. It was probably simply a morph.

I was wondering if we could also include some other cool species like the Syriac and North African elephants, European and Barbary lions, mao-nalo, moa, Haast's eagle, auroch, Falklands Island wolf, Toolache, sea mink and the Atlas bear?

Granted some of them might require some really far back PODs, but the sea mink was 1860, the wolf in 1876 and the bear in 1890, so I'm sure they can be more manageable.

Perhaps if the Royal Zoological Society gets its act together sooner, with the focus of its scientific studies of rare and critically endangered animals shifting from dissection and taxidermy to the sustained study of live specimens, facilitated by conservation efforts and captive breeding programs- as a potential POD, maybe Sir Stamford Raffle never suffers his fatal stroke ITTL, but continues as the chairman and president of RZS for several years, giving him time to implement his vision? Even more so after the opening of their zoo (probably OTL's London Zoo, but not necessarily), when it makes economic sense to keep their money-spinning star attractions such as the quaggas and the thylacines viable for as long as possible. And as IOTL, the majority of the modern public city zoos around the world follow their example. That way, even though all these species would still probably be driven to extinction in the wild at some stage, several of them would still have decent chances of clinging on in captivity, with the possibility of being released back into the wild at a later date.

JonasResende said:

I was wondering if we could also include some other cool species like the Syriac and North African elephants, European and Barbary lions, mao-nalo, moa, Haast's eagle, auroch, Falklands Island wolf, Toolache, sea mink and the Atlas bear?

Granted some of them might require some really far back PODs, but the sea mink was 1860, the wolf in 1876 and the bear in 1890, so I'm sure they can be more manageable.

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* Those elephants were not distinct species, only subspecies.
* Same for the lions. In fact the European lion was probably the same subspecies than the Barbary one, and even this, though officially extinct, exists in hybrid forms with other subspecies.
* Auroch is the same species of domestic cattle.
* Atlas bear is the same species of Brown bear, not even proved that a distinct subspecies, maybe the same of the existing Iberian brown bear.

Sea cows are tough because they are slow, meaty and tasty. They live at sea, where they are usually so many hungry sailors, and they are easy to kill. Worse, they live in just the wrong spot. Far enough that Eurpoeans only find them late when they have very sophiscated hunting techquines but early enough that no one will care if they kill them all.

Mario said:

* Those elephants were not distinct species, only subspecies.
* Same for the lions. In fact the European lion was probably the same subspecies than the Barbary one, and even this, though officially extinct, exists in hybrid forms with other subspecies.
* Auroch is the same species of domestic cattle.
* Atlas bear is the same species of Brown bear, not even proved that a distinct subspecies, maybe the same of the existing Iberian brown bear.

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Well, there are different ways in which people define species. Haven't neanderthals and denisovans both been scientifically proven as subspecies of our own, defined by their ability to interbreed and produce fertile offspring, as can be seen in the genome of modern humans? And with at least four separate populations of orca populations in the wild which have thus far been unable to be interbred in captivity, even through artificial insemination, surely this should be seen as conclusive proof that these aren't just races or even subspecies, but that each is in fact a separate species within the Orca family? Stop being overly pedantic, try not to troll, and try to lend sort though towards the original WI question.

(BTW, if this is for an ASB ATL, then shouldn't it be in that forum? just saying...)

mowque said:

Sea cows are tough because they are slow, meaty and tasty. They live at sea, where they are usually so many hungry sailors, and they are easy to kill. Worse, they live in just the wrong spot. Far enough that Eurpoeans only find them late when they have very sophiscated hunting techquines but early enough that no one will care if they kill them all.

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The Stellars Sea Cow might as well have evolved a sign on its back saying "Eat me!" on its back. The species was already on the way out when it was discovered (less than 2,000 in the wild), and all the sailors did was just accelerate a likely inevitable process.

Kung Fucious said:

The Stellars Sea Cow might as well have evolved a sign on its back saying "Eat me!" on its back. The species was already on the way out when it was discovered (less than 2,000 in the wild), and all the sailors did was just accelerate a likely inevitable process.

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Does anyone know why the sea-cows were already on the way out by the 18th century? Surely being hunted by the natives could not have decimated their numbers so entirely?

Also, maybe if we can prevent bird-pox from evolving/spreading - since that was also a major cause of some avian extinctions.